


Daring To Desire You

by Eva_Marlowe



Series: Daring to Desire You [1]
Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Fix-It of Sorts, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Jealousy, Literary References & Allusions, M/M, Temporary unhappiness, True Love, unrequited love but not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-01
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2019-01-07 14:58:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12235209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eva_Marlowe/pseuds/Eva_Marlowe
Summary: I adored this book, but the ending was very hard to digest. I have decided to write my own (happy) ending, because a love like Elio’s and Oliver’s deserves a happy ending with a vengeance.I have added more time-related references, but kept political ones to an absolute minimum. It’s more about music, food and the feel of the era.You will see that at some point the characters go to San Francisco. That part is only referred to, because I have never been there so I didn’t want to write rubbish. I also decided that Vimini should live, because I love her :)The story is narrated, like the novel, from Elio’s POV.There is quite a lot of explicit sex, but it’s loving and always consensual. If you do not enjoy M/M sex, please do not read the story (or the original book).Aciman is a genius and I am not, so please forgive my inadequacy. It is all intended as homage to a book I loved rather than an attempt to improve on it.Last but not least: I have mixed the book’s and film’s references, but I have only seen the trailer as the film is not out yet. If you have seen it, please forgive the errors. I wanted to publish my story before I could be influenced by Guadagnino’s masterpiece.Enjoy!





	1. Italy, December 1983 – January 1984

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a WIP. The second and final part will be posted tomorrow, but it has already been written.
> 
> I don't own any of the characters, they own me :)

The scent was the rich smoky fragrance of roasted chestnuts and spicy wine, so different from the salty brine of our summer idyll.

I had spent the past three months or so in a sort of frenetic limbo, with school and piano practice keeping me superficially occupied, even though my heart wasn’t into any of it.

One phone call from Oliver back in September had galvanised and entranced me, so that I permanently existed on a tight-rope of suppressed emotions.

“I was supposed to get married next spring,” his voice had told me, sounding alien and cold, his transatlantic twang almost chiding me, making me feel small and unimportant, like a servant informed that he’d need to air the rooms more thoroughly before his master’s return.

“Are you still there?” he enquired, after what must have been a long silence at my end.

“Why do you say _was_?”

It was his turn to be taciturn. My heart was slamming so hard against my ribs I feared they might crack. _Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt_!

“I broke it off,” he said, putting me out of my misery. “Listen, we’ll discuss it when we are face to face. I detest talking on the phone; it’s a breeding ground for misunderstandings. I wouldn’t want you to feel obligated or responsible in any way.”

“You said you would pay for our... for what happened between us.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean?”

He sighed, but I could detect the affection threaded through his exasperation; even though he was far away and I could not look into his eyes, that cord between us had not snapped.

“You are only seventeen, it’s easier for you to forget and move on. It’s not quite the same for me: that’s what I meant. It’s only natural and I’m not holding it against you.”

My chest felt unencumbered for the first time since August; I could breathe without feeling that a splinter of ice was stuck in my lungs.

“I can still feel your skin caressing mine,” I whispered and he couldn’t help but moan.

“If you don’t stop, you’ll kill me,” he murmured.

“You’ll kill me if you do,” I replied and that was the end of our conversation, since one of his students had requested his attention.

 

Since then he’d only called once and talked to my father; it had been a lengthy conversation of which I had been told nothing but the bare bones: Oliver was coming to stay for two weeks until the Epifania, after which he was moving to San Francisco, where he’d been offered a professorship at one of the universities. Why so far from New York, I had asked, and my father had given me one of his sardonic looks which meant: “You know exactly what’s going on.”

And yet I had not wanted to press him further, afraid to break those fragile walls I had built around the scant facts concerning Oliver’s newfound freedom.

Marzia and I had resumed our friendship as if nothing had intervened to modify it in what I had believed was an irrevocable manner. This should have made me happy; instead it made me suspicious of what had happened between Oliver and me: what if he’d intended to reduce our passion to the common denominator of a platonic affair? The last thing I wanted was the chumminess of being patted on the back and offered a paternal wink which would mean that our relationship had been only a bit of summer fun.

You wouldn’t do this to me, would you Oliver? Not after Rome, where you kissed me deeply even though I had just been sick and people were ogling us. Not after we shared every intimate secret which our bodies usually hide from the world.

You can forget me if you want to, but never let me be only a distant friend.

 

I decided that Bach would be just the thing, and that Glenn Gould’s interpretation was perfect for the lugubrious mood I was in. Not that I could ever hope to reach his masterful heights, but I liked to imitate the humming noises he made while he was playing. Tonight, that trick would help me focus on the music, while Oliver and my parents were drinking spicy wine by the fireplace.

We had shaken hands and I was mesmerised by the thick cashmere sweater you were wearing; the waves of heat rolling off your body like a sea of molten lava.

I couldn’t look you in the eyes, but my gaze darted here and there, collecting impressions of you, like random Polaroid pictures: your unshaven cheek, the sleeked-back hair, the golden glimmer of the Star of David, the bleached denim of your jeans. And your smell, which was smoky and earthy and went straight to my groin like a sword.

“You hair’s longer,” you said, and I mumbled something about it keeping my neck warm. “I like it,” was your reply, and for some reason I felt exactly like that time you massaged my shoulder: swooning and irritated that you could do this to me so easily while I wasn’t able to respond with the same breezy insouciance.

“Thanks,” I muttered and left you in the company of my parents who accompanied you to your room, which was – once again – mine.

 

Mafalda was overjoyed. She had prepared him a favourite dish of hers: _cappellacci con la zucca_ , pumpkin ravioli, which he devoured with the same gusto he’d reserved for her apricot juice. 

“Deliziosi,” he declared, smacking his lips with relish. She beamed and thanked him profusely. “Grazie, grazie, signor Ulliva,” she repeated.

 _La muvi star_ : that he was and always would be to her and to my mother, too.

“E il poker?” my mother asked, but her eyes were brimming over with amusement, as if she’d predicted that he would be embarrassed at the double-entendre.

“I am done with it for the moment,” he replied, seriously. It was evident that his lifestyle had become less frivolous: he would no longer be as indifferent with his possessions as he had been during the summer. Even though he had said he’d always paid his way since prep school, perhaps he hadn’t been entirely sincere.

He had mentioned once that his father was a strict traditionalist, religious and observant. The implications were clear that he didn’t know about Oliver’s sexuality and that he would not accept any version of his son that strayed from his precepts.

“You have enjoyed the distraction, but that’s all it was,” my father commented, smiling softly and clasping my mother’s hand, “You have more important projects to pursue, infinitely more rewarding.”

Oliver looked at his wine glass, seemingly fascinated by the ruby liquid, and nodded.

“Too right, Pro,” he agreed and I sensed that they were all waiting for my contribution to the conversation, but I had none to give.

Mafalda saved me by bringing in the Pandoro, its mountainous shape coated in icing sugar. I wrapped my slice inside a paper napkin and took it with me as I went to the drawing room to play the piano.

You surely must have thought me heartless, Oliver, but I was only afraid that my expectations were going to be dashed.

Perhaps our affair had opened you up to other men’s attentions: older men, independent men, less scrawny men.

Because that was always my dilemma: why would a Greek god like you waste his time with a skinny little boy like me? What did I have to offer that couldn’t be bettered by hundreds, thousands of more deserving men?

I found that I was growling instead of humming, but surely the ghost of Gould would not object; after all, it was passion which coursed through me albeit of a non-musical nature.

“You are playing it by the book,” Oliver said, close to my left ear, “No daring interpretations.”

I had not heard him approach nor had I noticed my parents leave the room.

“Some things should not be tampered with.”

“I agree wholeheartedly.”

His hand was on the back of my neck, playing with my hair, fingers combing through the knotted curls at the nape.

“You preferred me with short hair,” I said, fatuously.

His laughter echoed in the room, waking it from its wintry slumber.

“The things you say... I prefer you here with me, just as you are. But I’m starting to suspect you’d rather I’d not come at all.”

Part of me wanted to shrug, like I had done after that first night together, when he’d asked me if I thought we should have talked before making love. I wasn’t acting out of cruelty, but because I was overwhelmed by the intensity of my feelings for him. In the end, I opted for the truth.

“I can’t quite believe you’re here.”

He bent down and kissed me on the neck. It was sweet and wet and perfect, I got hard in a second.

Still sitting on the piano stool, I turned towards him and buried my face in his stomach, feeling its muscles contract beneath my touch.

The wool smelled of sandalwood and maleness. I was on fire from head to toes, limp as a ragged doll and painfully aroused.

“Should I carry you to bed, my sweet prince?”

I shook my head and took a few deep breaths.

What would it be like to fall into you again only to lose you in a fortnight? Suddenly, our last day in Rome returned to me in all its hurtful glory; that and the conversation with my father, which had worked through me like a fine blade: barely a twinge of pain as it went in, but a fatal wound after the fact: _nessun dolore_ , like the song, whose lyrics meant exactly the opposite.

Oliver must have sensed the reason of my indecision; after all, he’d always read me like a book, even at my most secretive.

“This time we’ll talk first. Actually, I don’t want to do anything tonight.”

“Shall I sleep in the guest room then?”

I sounded shrill and tearful like a child who’s been sent to bed without dinner.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep if you’re not in bed with me,” he said.

“Am I allowed to kiss you?”

He cupped my chin in his hand and caressed my lower lip with his thumb.

“You goose”

Before I could protest, he tickled my sides with his free hand; it soon devolved in a silly wrestling match that had us giggling and squawking, at ease with one another at last. Four months evaporated in a matter of seconds and we were back to where it had all begun.

 

Outside my room, in the corridor, we shared a cigarette. I had a crumpled packet of Gauloises in my pocket and he had a box of matches with the word Speranza – Hope – printed on it.

“Is this from the restaurant in town?”

“We went there once. Pizza and beers, I think.”

“You kept the match-box all this time?”

“I kept the match-box all this time,” he replied, snorting smoke from his nostrils.

I was bloated with happiness, drunk on the ecstasy of his presence.

Outside the night was clear and still, the sky dotted with stars but more remote than in the summer, when it has seemed to enclose us in its complicit embrace.

“I miss the sound of the cicadas,” he said, and bent down to kiss me on the cheek; it was innocent and close-lipped and all the more sensual because of its restraint.

“I don’t miss the mosquitoes,” I replied, and licked along the length of his thumb.

“Quit provoking me.”

“Do we really have to talk?”

“That time we didn’t you regretted it, remember? When you woke up in the morning, you hated what we had done. You’d have asked me to pack up and leave, if it had been up to you.”

I was too startled to contradict him. Of course he had known exactly what I’d felt, how I’d made an inventory of his limbs to prove to myself that I was indifferent to them, that I no longer lusted after them.

“It didn’t last very long.”

“Long enough to make me feel sick about myself, but that’s not the point. It was you I was thinking of, the damage I might have caused you.”

“I was only a bit sore.”

“You were disgusted with me: admit it.”

I leaned against him, my head on his chest, above his heart.

“It was a bit like indigestion, like having eaten too much ice-cream.”

Better not tell him that I’d wished I could bathe in mouthwash to do away with the remorse and self-loathing. He’d never touch me again and I was certain that the feeling had not been due to him, but to the act itself, which in the light of day had seemed monstrous and charged with an ominous significance.

“I should have stopped.”

“I didn’t want you to.”

“You didn’t know what you were asking for.”

“But you knew what you were taking.”

“That’s the problem, right there.”

I slid my hand into his, twining our fingers together; they were no longer tanned, those fingers, and their delicate whiteness moved me, despite their manly strength.

Our cigarettes were all but consumed and we threw the stubs out into the back garden.

“I wanted it to be you,” I said, and it wasn’t a lie, even though I kept to myself the myriad doubts of that night, the voices in my head urging me to turn and walk away. You shouldn’t have done this, what have you done, they’d lamented the following morning; our lovemaking had momentarily cauterised me of all passion and affection towards him.

“You know what they say: careful what you wish for.”

“Is this why you won’t touch me now?”

“I never said that. Come on, let’s go lie down beneath the covers. It’s freezing cold in here,” he laughed and held me tight against his chest. I’d half forgotten how his light, unconcerned, all-American self-assurance was a front to hide Oliver’s shyness and the intensity of his moods.

Now I always know how to react, but back then I was still overwhelmed by the lust his proximity always awakened in me. My pants were already wet and I ached to be naked in bed with him.

“Yes,” I replied, and smeared my cheek above his beating heart.

 

I wasn’t to have my wish fulfilled: Oliver insisted we kept t-shirts and pyjama pants on, ignoring my pleas and tantrums.

“It’s easier to warm up if we are fully undressed,” I protested, “Same as when you bathe in the sea and have to wet your hair too to normalise your body temperature.”

He smiled at me, fondly, his eyes shining in the dim light provided by my Oxford night-light.

“What?”

“Trying to convince me with science: that’s a clever strategy.”

He kissed the tip of my nose, both my cheeks and along my jaw, and I arched my back to press against him before he withdrew, as I was sure he would.

The last thing I wanted was to spend our precious time talking, especially considering how difficult it was for me to put into words all those things that mattered. I could pass the time of day chatting about Britten or Bassani, but when it came to discuss my feelings, I stuttered and lost all my eloquence.

“It isn’t easy for me either, if that’s what you imagine, but there’s no other way. If you prefer, you could ask me questions.”

I lay in his arms, my head on his shoulder.

“What about your fiancée?”

The word was as alien in my mouth as Mandarin or Japanese. Oliver’s sigh tickled my skin; his breath was spicy and I desperately wanted to lick his mouth, his tongue.

“We had been on and off for a year before I came to Italy. She was against the idea of travelling; she loves the States and doesn’t care much for the rest of the world. Her folks are friends of mine; all was settled for a spring wedding, next year. Truth is I wanted to get away for the summer not only for my book, but also because there’s something I needed to find out, about myself.”

“Did you?”

“You could say that.”

“I wasn’t the first man you slept with.”

It wasn’t a question, for the wasn’t a doubt in my head that Oliver was experienced, that mine wasn’t the first cock he’d taken in his mouth.

“I had fooled around when I was at college; we all did. Before Italy, I wondered if it had been only a phase. I like women too.”

“That much was obvious.”

“You thought I slept with every skirt in the vicinity, but I told you already that you were wrong, my friend. I may have flirted and even given away a few kisses, but that was as far as it went.”

I remember how he’d danced with Chiara, the way she had swayed her hips and how he’d stuck to her like a _francobollo_ , her thigh pressed against his crotch. I clicked my tongue and shook my head.

“What you saw was what you were supposed to see.”

 “You wanted to make me jealous?”

“The first time I touched you, you recoiled. After that, you always kept your distance and I kept mine. I was hoping you’d react if I pushed you a little. It wasn’t meant to hurt you, only to shake you awake.”

“I spent hours staring at your bathing suit, when we were in _heaven_.”

“And I spent hours wishing you’d come over and kiss me.”

That was an invitation I couldn’t refuse: I rolled on top of him and crushed his lips with mine, with the same famished single-mindedness of that first time. The stubble on his chin scraped my skin, his mouth opened letting out a moan and then I was finally tasting him; he was hot and smoky and as desperate as I was. His tongue teased and caressed mine, but soon became bold and insistent as the kiss deepened and grew in intensity.

He was the first one to draw back, but he was breathing fast, biting the inside of his cheek.

“If you keep doing this, we won’t be able to finish this conversation, and I’m afraid we have to. Tomorrow I better shave,” he added, caressing my reddened skin.

I didn’t mind -I said - if he hurt me a little. His eyes filled with something akin to revulsion.

“But I do. I care about you and never want to harm you. Your skin is a soft as a peach.”

The mention of that particular fruit was serendipitous, as we both remembered my dalliance with it and broke into a fit of giggles.

“I haven’t been able to even look at a peach since that day,” he said.

“Anchise would have sent us both to the madhouse if he’d realised what we’d done to his precious fruit.”

“It was certainly precious to me, once you were done with it.”

I stared straight into his eyes and remembered the steely glares he used to impale me with. How I had dreaded them and felt that I deserved them at the same time. And now I could only see them for what they had been: a self-defence mechanism and an attempt at staving off the inevitable.

There were bluish shadows under them, which I had not noticed before.

“I haven’t been sleeping well, lately. It’s all done and dusted, thankfully.”

“You’ve broken off your engagement because you’ve realised that you want to keep sleeping with men?”

“You... I want to keep sleeping with you.”

The magnitude of this declaration had the same effect on me as the peach episode: I let the tears stream down my face and sobbed with abandon.

“It doesn’t have to become a big melodrama; I don’t want you to feel obligated or restricted; not even while I am here. I spoke to your father and he told me it was up to you, that he and your mother wouldn’t interfere with your decision, provided your education came first.”

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” I asked, echoing the question he’d asked me that afternoon in late July.

It felt absurd that I could have all this skin to myself: the underside of his forearms, his furry chest, the perfect line of his nose. I had truly believed I lost them for good, that this December would be a short reprieve before a life-long separation.

He kissed the freckles on my neck, one by one, humming as he went.

“After you get your exams next July you could come to the States to study. You told me that it was part of your plans even before we met. San Francisco has some great Universities and it would be easier for us to be... what we are over there. We wouldn’t have to live together; in fact, I’d rather you shared your digs with other students. It’s an experience you shouldn’t miss.”

I was dumbstruck again; the words that I wanted to say were stuck inside my throat, they were almost a tangible presence, as if I had swallowed a set of Scrabble tiles.

“ _And the too much of my speaking, heaped up round the little crystal dressed in the style of your silence_ ,” he murmured.

He was quoting Celan at me, knowing as he must have that it would mean the world to me; he had recognised me like one brother discerns another in the wilderness: _mon semblable, mon frère_. He had also released me from the impossible task of giving a direct answer.

“Until July we could correspond, like Celan and Gisèle De Lestrange,” I said.

“Or better still like Celan and Bachmann, since he never could get over her, even after he got married to Lestrange.”

“Do you want to get over me?”

“I tried and you can see how successful I was.”

“I used to think that one day you had to return my feelings, because of what Dante says about Paolo and Francesca in the Inferno.

“ _Amor ch’a nullo amato amar perdona_ ”

“Yes,” I whispered and when he took my mouth with his, I kept repeating that one magic syllable: yes, yes, yes, yes.

We fell asleep soon after, my mouth still on his.

 

I woke up early; it was dark outside. We had forgotten to switch off the Oxford night-light and it was casting a shadow over Oliver’s placid face, so relaxed in his sleep that he seemed younger than me, a mere boy.

All the emotions which had coursed through me the night before had subsided into one thick current of desire. I didn’t wish to wake him, so I stared at him and smelled his skin, which emanated a faint fragrance of soap and musk.

My first intention had been to melt against him, let my body surrender to his in a similar “swoon” to the one I had experienced when he’d massaged my shoulder after the volleyball match the previous summer. But the combination of his sleepy youthfulness added to the knowledge of what he’d sacrificed for me engendered in me a fierce need to protect and take care of him. I had to be one to act, to show him that I was capable of doing things for him too and not only the adoring disciple who tagged after him, kissing the hem of his robe.

“Morning,” he muttered, bleary and still caught in his dreams.

He eyed me for a moment then he shook off the vestiges of sleep like one might do with an umbrella after a spring shower.

Used as he was to go jogging at dawn, I was afraid he might jump out of bed and channel his energies into athleticism. I shouldn’t have worried.

“Why are we not naked yet?” he asked, slipping one hand inside my pants, finding me ready and wet and on the verge of spilling over. He smiled at me, fond and wicked, and kissed the corner of my mouth.

“You wanted to talk first.”

“I have the most preposterous ideas.”

He started to remove his night clothes, but I hastened to take charge of that, signalling my intentions, which I knew he would guess, since he was adept at reading people’s secret codes and especially mine.

“Fuck me, Oliver,” he growled in my ear, and I almost came in my pants.

“Elio, Elio, Elio,” I moaned and when I went to remove his bottoms, I found them soaking wet, and his erection red and straining.

When we were both down to just skin, I climbed over him and just lay there, panting like after a long swim, feeling his pulse in his chest and his twitching cock, while his hands, tender like doves, caressed the length of my back and the swell of my buttocks.

I had since acquired a pot of _Glicemille_ hand cream which I had used while self-pleasuring to the memory of the man I was about to possess.

Only then I really believed he hadn’t had anyone since the summer; only when I felt how tight he was and how eager. When I finally pushed into him, he called out my name then his own name, and I didn’t manage to last more than a few thrusts. I stroked him until he came over my tummy and chest, a spectacle that rendered us both drunk with passion and something much deeper, that I did not dare call love.

 

At breakfast, my parents pretended not to notice my dreamy silences and the stubble burn around my mouth.

If that wasn’t enough, I couldn’t refrain from cutting Oliver’s soft-boiled egg. If this had been a Hitchcock picture, that would have been the telling clue which nailed the murderer. My father smiled at my mother and she took her time fixing his cup of milky coffee, stirring the liquid with excessive care. We heard the phone ring and soon after Mafalda came in to inform us that my aunt wanted to say hello to Oliver; she had gone skiing in Val d’Aosta, together with Chiara and her family.

“Excuse me,” he said, and left the room followed by a beaming Mafalda.

“Il _cauboi_ is very popular,” my mother said, after he’d gone.

I must have flushed, because my father immediately changed the subject and embarked on a discussion on the philosophy of Wittgenstein, which I couldn’t and wasn’t supposed to follow. He was providing me with background noise against which I was allowed to bask in my blinding happiness. We had more than two weeks in front of us and after little more than six months, we wouldn’t need to be apart unless we wanted to. I was turning eighteen three days after Christmas, which meant that I would be spending it with him for the first time. His birthday was at the end of May, so that I would be missing it, like I had the previous one, only by a matter of days.

Timing is everything in life, as I was going to find out in the near future at great personal cost; one that I paid with heartbreak and increased self-loathing.

“She regrets she never came with me on that _gita_ ,” Oliver explained, when he sat back down at the breakfast table.

“My sister changes her mind all the time,” my mother replied.

“I didn’t blame her...”

“You had better things to do,” suggested my father, smiling.

When I saw Oliver’s expression, I knew he was about to speak of our agreement and I didn’t want to be the baby of the family again. I wouldn’t let him carry me in his arms like a defenceless maiden.

“I have decided that I would like to go to San Francisco to study, after my diploma. You said I could go to the States if I was prepared to work really hard.”

At last the artificial atmosphere had been shattered to pieces and we could be ourselves again, happy that a conclusion had been reached which satisfied everybody and cleared the air for the remainder of our guest’s stay.

Most of all, I remember how luminous Oliver seemed to me, more golden and blue-eyed than ever, like Helmut Berger in The Garden Of The Finzi Continis, a film about  a Jewish family which was a great favourite of mine. Oliver and I had watched it together during one of those rainy nights before we became friends. He had never seen it or heard about it, but he’d fallen in love with it and had insisted on reading the novel on which it was based. He had taken the book with him to _heaven_ , and I had watched him from behind my sunglasses, basking in the ecstasy of having procured that pleasure for him. I realised that I had also unveiled something of myself, and with every page he turned he had shown that he valued my friendship, despite the glares and the hostile silences.

 

The following days were the most perfectly happy time of my life. The joy that I have felt later - the one which I am experiencing now - may have been greater, but it has been complicated by regrets and by the demands of adulthood; those days were encrusted with delight and hope and nothing intervened to spoil them.

After that breakfast, my father asked Oliver about his new book on Democritus while my mother tousled my hair and told me about their intention to go stay in the house in town until Christmas Eve.

And so they did, leaving us alone with Mafalda, free to do what we liked.

We spent hours talking of everything and nothing, lying back on the rug by the fire, eating rich food and reading, laughing, holding hands, kissing, reshaping the world to our image. There were never any arguments, only a sort of pretend chiding when I refused to play a piece the way “it was supposed to be played” or when I ate too much _torrone_ and was sick in the middle of the night. On that occasion, Oliver had been angrier at himself for not having taken care of me.

“I should have stopped you after the first one.”

“You tried.”

“Trying is not enough,” he said, massaging my stomach and my tummy, while I drank camomile tea with lemon.

After throwing up I was fine again, weak and aroused in equal measure. I covered his hand with mine and guided down to my crotch.

“Are you sure this is what you want?”

He was smiling but his eyes were dark with worry, which seemed an exaggeration since it had been nothing more than a spot of indigestion. I nodded and slid onto his lap, writhing and whimpering while he brought me off with his hand. As he stroked me, he murmured words into my neck which I could not hear. When I asked him about it afterwards, he laughed and shrugged, the same avoidance trick I had used on him before. I wanted to reciprocate, but he wouldn’t let me. This was only for you, he said, part of the cure. Imagine a doctor prescribing sexual manipulation as a way to cure belly-aches. He cleaned me up with one of his t-shirts – which I requisitioned like I had done with billowy – and lay down next to me, holding my hand until I fell asleep.

 

Le Danzing was closed for the winter, but a group of my school friends were going to throw a party for my birthday; Marzia wasn’t going to be there, because her parents had taken her to Taormina to visit her mother’s family. As excited as I was about the party, it would be impossible for Oliver and me to dance together in the way he’d danced with Chiara and the other girls.

“She slipped a thigh between your legs,” I teased him one afternoon, while we were hiding in my room.

My parents had returned in time for Christmas and a number of cousins and other relatives had descended on us like a plague of locusts. Oliver and I did our best to entertain them, but we tried to sneak away whenever we could do so without being too obvious.

“I told you that I did it only because I know you were watching us.”

“Cruel”

“Only to be kind”

I pinched his arm and he tickled my side. We wrestled for a bit until we were breathless and giddy.

“Quoting Hamlet won’t get you out of jail.”

“What can I do to atone for my sins?”

“You could dance with me, like you did with her.”

He sprang up and inserted a cassette in the stereo. It was a mixed tape of Baroque music. Oliver opened his arms wide in invitation. When he had me in his grasp, he swayed and rolled his hips, one hand splayed between my shoulder blades; I pushed closer still, staring into his eyes.

We were both hard in no time. It wasn’t so much his touch which burnt me to the core, but his eyes gazing fixedly into mine; that impressive glare of his affecting me like nothing else could. We stopped moving and started kissing; hungry, wet kisses which started frantic but turned languorous and hypnotic, until I could no longer stand and had to lean on him for support.

When he tried to push me down on the bed, I turned round and climbed on it on all fours, making my intentions clear.

“I want it on my hands and knees.”

The words didn’t need saying, but I wanted to hear them spoken, wanted the thrill they gave me, the sense that there was a treasure-trove of shame that I had not opened yet, that pleasure was only in its infancy and I could help it walk, run, fly.

What I had not suspected was his determination to follow me into the fire and always offer me everything he had with clear-eyed profligacy.

Instead of preparing me with his fingers, he started with his tongue, making me into a banquet of delicacies whose taste he’d coveted his entire life. I came twice, for the first time in my life: once when was he still inside me and again, deep into his mouth.

He had been careful not to hurt me, inspecting my face for any slight grimace or tightening of lips.

“Are you okay?” he’d asked, his mouth still full of me.

“I’m okay everywhere. Any better and you would have killed me.”

I could see that he was afraid I might withdraw, declaring that I had enough of him.

My darling Oliver, light of my life, as if I could ever survive without you.

“Never hide from me.”

“You’re the only one who’s seen everything, who knows everything.”

“Good,” he replied, and it was then that the music stopped.

 

In winter, Vimini’s family usually stayed in Milan and spent the school holidays on the Riviera, like the characters of a Patricia Highsmith thriller. Because of Oliver, she had convinced her parents to open their villa for a few days before they left for Sanremo. She appeared on our front door like a fairy dropped from the sky, wrapped inside a shearling coat with matching gloves and bobble hat.

It was as if she and Oliver had never separated and their first conversation was a continuation of an old argument they’d had about the character of Amy in Little Women.

“She’s nasty and vain.”

“Perhaps she just needs to mature.”

While they drank hot chocolate with _panna_ , I pretended to be engrossed in transcribing a Chopin piano concerto.

 _Used to say, I like Chopin, Love me now and again. Rainy days never say goodbye to desire when we are together_. That song had been a hit last summer; I had danced to it and so had all my friends. Without realising it, I started singing it and Vimini joined in, slightly off tune, _Rainy days growing in your eyes tell me where's my way_ , then Oliver with his honeyed tenor, _Imagine your face in a sunshine reflection, a vision of blue skies forever distractions_. When we got to the chorus again, Mafalda came into the living room carrying a plate of chestnut flour _frittelle_. She stared at the three of us with baffled amusement then left the room muttering to herself in Neapolitan dialect.

The fritters are sublime, I should congratulate Mafalda, he said and off he went to the kitchen, plate in hand.

“I haven’t changed my mind,” Vimini said, sauntering after Oliver, “He likes you more than you like him.”

He couldn’t have said anything this time, so it was her impression not his. I didn’t know which option was worse.

 

Later that same afternoon, while I tinkered with a Tippett Sonata, I watched them play chess. My father had tried to engage Oliver in a discussion about perception and idealism according to Bergson, but he wouldn’t leave Vimini’s side.

“I promised I would teach her to play chess,” he said, and my mother sided with him, “He’s on holiday, _in vacanza_ , leave him alone.”

That day left a strange bitter taste in my mouth, a sense of having been left out and, more seriously, of having deprived Oliver of something fundamental.

It didn’t cross my mind back then what that something was: fatherhood.

 

We didn’t celebrate Christmas the Catholic way, but we did enjoy the cuisine and some of the rituals that went with it. One of them was the Nativity, the _Presepe_ : some of them were amazing feats of ingenuity, with water cascading down papier-mâché rocks and cardboard skies turning dark then bright with stars.

On Boxing Day, Manfredi drove the four of us to Bergamo and before lunch we visited the Duomo. The early morning Mass had just concluded and people were spilling out, leisurely, the women wearing furs and the men cashmere or shearling.

My father was explaining that the Neo-Classical front was a result of recent renovations, while the original cathedral was from the Quattrocento, designed by the Florentine Filarete but with many subsequent interventions by other architects.

“I am convinced that one day they will find the remains dating back to at least the Roman period. There is sufficient evidence of this in the history of the area.”

Oliver enquired about the early Christian cathedral of San Vincenzo and thus we lost them for a long while, unwilling, and in my case unable, to join in the conversation.

“They get on so well, like they have known each other for years,” my mother said, taking me by the hand and pulling me towards the left-side chapel to admire the Modonna and Child by Moroni. I left her in contemplation of the sad-tender visage of Mary and was drawn instead to the magnificence of the apse with its giant Tiepolo. It was overpowering and filled me with a sort of sensual dread.

“The Martyrdom of St. John”

Oliver was standing behind me and for a brief moment I thought he would embrace me. Blasphemy in the house of God; it was not our temple, but it was our God all the same. I had not stopped to consider that there was no place for us in here. We were an aberration, nature’s cruel joke. Did it matter to me, I wondered, and decided that it did not. But when I turned to look at Oliver’s profile, I suspected it was not the same for him.

“What are you thinking of?”

“The angel looking down on the proceedings reminds me of you.”

“Tiepolo’s figures always tend to be deathly pale.”

“Not because of that, you goose. Look at how distant he is from the action. Up there, floating above the human carnage; yet he is the one carrying the crown that will decide John’s destiny.”

Was he accusing me of passivity? Was I guilty of a form of cunning unassertiveness?

I remembered Vimini’s words with unease, but I didn’t dare ask Oliver what he’d meant.

 

My birthday party was held at the Villa Moreschi, which had been reopened for the occasion. It was a sprawling Palladian mansion with a large square pool whose surface was now covered with dead leaves. Snow had been predicted since after Christmas, but it had not yet obliged.

I have blurry memories of the party, blurry and happy: we drank, danced, smoked and drank some more.

I was intoxicated on Bacardi & Coke, high on weed and on the excitement of watching Oliver’s blond perfection, his fluid moves on the dance-floor, his popularity, and knowing that all of him was mine, mine, mine.

As a present, he’d given me the latest Philip Glass record, the back cover signed by the man himself. _I met him by chance in a book-shop in the Village,_ he’d explained, modestly. You’ll miss New York, I’d said. The weather is better in San Francisco and I always love a challenge, he’d replied, kissing the palm of my hand.

 

Soon after the midnight _brindisi_ , during which everybody had dutifully sang “Happy Birthday to you” and uncorked bottles of Spumante, our host, Momo Moreschi, proposed a game of hide-and-seek and I was to be the sole ‘victim’.

I knew the house like the back of my hand, since Momo and I had been friends since infancy. My favourite place was the attic, which could only be accessed through a concealed panel located along the second floor landing.

I climbed the rickety ladder, stumbling twice and bruising one of my knees. I closed the trap door behind me and switched on the ceiling light, which - bizarrely - was an old glass chandelier missing half of its candle-shaped bulbs.

There were piles of old toys and boxes with clothes and yellowed school books. I sat on the rocking chair and waited, with my eyes closed and the lyrics of Vienna in my head. _The warmth of your hand and a cold grey sky, it fades to the distance_.

The minutes passed but no one came to find me. I must have drifted off for a while, because when I opened my eyes Momo and Oliver were in the room, under the chandelier, drinking Spumante and sharing a joint.

“I was sure you’d be hiding in here,” said Momo, passing me the joint and his half-full glass. “I better go tell the others that I found you.”

He mock-punched Oliver on the shoulder and left us there, alone.

“To the birthday boy,” Oliver said, raising his glass. “Eighteen is a big milestone.”

“From this moment on, the years will speed by and disappear in the distance, in the blink of an eye,” I declared, stoned and melodramatic.

He sat down at my feet and let his head rest against my shin.

“You just rhymed.”

His blond hair was soaked with sweat and his blue shirt was unbuttoned down to his chest. I bent down and slipped my hand inside it, wanting to feel his damp skin, the abdominal muscles rippling beneath my fingers. He raised his arm and curled it around my neck.

“I can’t stop wanting this,” I said, marvelling at the truth of this statement. It seemed to me that I spent my days suspended in a lust-swollen cloud, always ready to take and be taken, like those ripe apricots inflamed by the summer sunshine.

“Never stop,” he replied, and I slid down, falling on him and into him, kissing and stroking and licking until I didn’t quite know where he ended and I began.

 

At New Year’s Eve, my family traditionally held a large dinner party to which a vast amount of people were invited. We had fireworks at midnight and I played the piano for our guests while they were sipping coffee.

Vimini came with her parents, but she snubbed them in favour of sitting next to Oliver, who reciprocated by dedicating most of his time and conversational efforts to her; a little girl just ten years old and she had him wrapped around her little finger.

Like the previous summer, I wondered what they could possibly have in common: a self-assured all-American boy and a quaint Italian child. Later on, I understood that he loved her wide-eyed sincerity, her lack of artifice and timidity and that he treasured her like the little sister he’d never had.

“We are about to step into Orwell’s nightmare,” a colleague of my father said, as we were eating the _zampone_ with lentils and mashed potatoes.

“We are not yet there but it’s bound to happen someday. Technology will rule our lives in the not-too-distant future,” my father replied.

Reading 1984 in 1984 had to be the height of sophistication, so I decided that I would do that when in San Francisco, to show the locals that I was more than just an Italian country boy.

“It’s a terrifying story,” said my cousin Giulia. She was fifteen and constantly scared of everything. It must have been a family trait.

“What makes it so scary is the knowledge that humanity is always on the brink of unspeakable cruelty; that we never learn from our mistakes,” said Oliver.

“I would love to say that I’m more optimistic than you, but as a fellow Jew I can only concur,” replied my father.

The conversation was then steered towards more cheerful topics, but I kept thinking about the novel and its bleak, hopeless ending. Could lives be as bleak and hopeless as that? Death was distant and incomprehensible, but I had already befriended misery and had not enjoyed it one bit.

 

After the fireworks, my father had allowed Oliver to borrow our car and we drove to a secluded spot near the river bank. He parked it in a clearing which was well known to us both, since we had made love there on a hot August night. _All is quiet on New Year’s Day, I want to be with you, be with you night and day_ , U2 were singing on the radio. The sky was black with clouds and it was freezing cold.

“This time it’s really going to snow,” I said, caressing the back of his head.

My heart was in my throat and I didn’t even know why I was feeling so nervous. Perhaps it was Oliver’s silence, his stillness, so unusual for him, who was always full of energy even when sitting down with a book.

Before I could ask him what was going on, he turned towards me and took my face in his hands and gave me a look of such intensity I feared he was about to break up with me. I’m sorry kid, but I have decided this is too much of a sacrifice for me. I am going back to New York and to my fiancée. I have fallen in love with Momo Moreschi. Anything seemed possible to my overworked imagination.

“I love you,” he murmured, instead. “I don’t expect you to say it in return. I don’t want you to. Just know that I love you more than I have ever loved anyone in my whole life, and I can’t be sure but I think this is it for me. You are it. Whatever happens between us, always remember tonight.”

The first snowflakes were floating in the air like dandelion seeds, but I wasn’t aware of noticing them. My entire world had shrunk down, or should I say expanded to - Oliver’s precious face, his blue gaze, the musky scent of his skin, the pulsing of his blood underneath it and the words he’d just said.

I tried to speak, but my throat was so tight I could hardly breathe.

“Come here,” he said, and took me in his arms, or as much of me as he could, considering the gear-shift which stood between us.

How prophetic mundane objects can become when one looks back across the wilderness of time.

 

We moved to the back seats and took our clothes off. It was too cold to fully undress, but we removed our shoes, socks and trousers and unbuttoned our shirts.

When he felt that again I was struggling to speak, he kissed me, softly at first then more firmly.

“Don’t say anything now,” he said, and slipped his tongue inside my mouth. “Just tell me if this makes you happy.”

“Yes,” I whispered and kissed him with a violence born of the frustration and disgust at my own inadequacy. I wanted to make love to him, but he slowed me down, caressing my body all over, keeping me warm and half-mad with desire.

“Kiss me again,” he kept asking and I did, biting his mouth with the certainty that I should be inside him and he inside me in a definitive way. No return, no way out.

 

Later, in the warmth and comfort of his room, my room, we did something we had never tried before, always discouraged by our difference in heights.

We giggled as we tried and failed to find the right balance, but all laughter stopped when the pleasure suddenly overtook us. It was intimate and loving but the carnality and base animalism of the act liberated something in me which until that moment had still been locked away.

I came in his mouth before he came in mine, but it was a matter of seconds. I’d never ejaculated such quantities and he was flooding me with similar abundance.

I’m yours, Oliver, forever, until the day I die.

Did I say it out loud? I don’t know, but it was the truth, even though I didn’t know it yet.

 

After that, the days passed quickly and the time came when Oliver was going to leave us. My parents had proposed to take us to Griante the day before his departure, as a sort of goodbye present. On the Lake of Como, it was the backdrop to much of Stendhal’s “La Chartreuse de Parme” and it had inspired the likes of Verdi and Longfellow.

“Imagine the conversation between Stendhal and Lord Byron,” my father said, as we admired the lake and the promontory of Bellagio on the opposite side of it.

The snow had melted under the glorious winter sunshine.

“Byron haughty and easily offended and Stendhal worshipping, shy and dazzled by the celebrated artist,” Oliver replied.

“I don’t know why but the story reminds me of something,” my mother said, ruffling my hair.

“In the end he came to realise that Byron was perhaps great in talent but also vain and petty and at times cruel,” I added, because I knew the story well.

“He was a human being, not a god,” concluded Oliver, and then the conversation turned to literature and Napoleonic history.

But I do remember the tone of your reply, my darling Oliver, as if you’d wanted to warn me that you would disappoint me one day, that I would perceive your faults and grow tired of them, of you.

There was not an atom of me, not a cell in my body that didn’t crave you, but you were older and had seen it all before.

I was reading the story for the first time, but you’d already discerned the ending.


	2. London, September 1986

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here's the rest of the story.  
> Thanks to you all for commenting and leaving kudos. I love you all, almost as much as I love Oliver and Elio ha ha
> 
> The course of true love never did run smooth....

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a few notes: 
> 
> \- The film they allude to is Goodbye Again, released in Europe as Aimez-vous Brahms?, based on the novel Aimez-vous Brahms? by Françoise Sagan.  
> \- The Frankie Goes to Hollywood songs are Relax and The Power of Love  
> \- For those who are not familiar with Jewish funeral rites, the burial has to happen within 72 hours of passing.  
> \- Denmark allowed same sex partnerships in 1989, so I took a bit of a licence there.

It was mild for early September, but chilly for me, since I’d only recently returned from the sweltering heat of an Italian summer.

Walking along the river, I couldn’t tell whether I was glad to be back.

A pleasant sense of anonymity and the freedom to roam the city without always feeling observed were threaded through with loneliness and melancholia.

And underneath it was, as usual, the simmering of discontent, the whiff of nausea that came with the memory of another summer, of another foreign country.

In late June 1984, I had travelled to San Francisco with a heart full of Oliver and a mind which refused to engage with the practicalities of that move.

More than two years later, I still could not pinpoint the moment when the tide had started to turn. One thing was my inability to adapt to the American cultural landscape. I missed the ancient history engraved in every stone of my native country and felt like my roots had been severed with nothing to replace them but my love for a man whose past I knew so little of.

At the start, it was not unlike the many holidays I had taken with my parents: I was a tourist, a curious, elated and lust-filled explorer.

Perhaps if it had been New York rather than San Francisco things would have been different. Not only because it was a more familiar city, but also because I could have easily slotted into Oliver’s old life and it wouldn’t have felt like we were both starting from scratch.

I remember waking up one morning in August and being absolutely certain that I wouldn’t want to spend my university years in the States. I wanted Oliver, but that life wasn’t for me. Perceptive as he was, he understood the situation even before I had it figured out in my head; he became over-polite and distant, with that vitrified look in his eyes which I had dreaded to encounter again.

“I don’t want to lose you.”

“We will speak on the phone and write long letters.”

“Yes,” I had replied, but already knew that he would cut all ties between us.

I was right.

My father kept in touch with him and so did Vimini, but neither of them told me anything.

It was for the best, they said. What they meant was that Oliver thought I should forget him.

 

I returned to Italy at the end of August and decided I would study in Bologna so that I could attend Eco’s semiotics courses at the DAMS. What I didn’t know and was to find out months later quite by chance, was that Eco had been guest professor at Columbia the previous year and therefore had met Oliver and admired him and his work.

The magnitude of my loss was made all the more apparent to me, together with a vague feeling of fatality. Wherever I went, I wouldn’t escape the consequences of my failure. Nemesis was waiting for me, crouched in the shadows, eager to spring upon me.

Another result of my adventure was my diminished sexual appetite, which dwindled to nothing when it came to girls. I was the perfect friend, little brother, confidant; they loved my company, some even fell in love, but I did not feel anything. My heart was cauterised, like a wound that would bleed no more.

 

I refused to spend the summer of 1985 with my parents; the idea of another summer guest, another face and body replacing Oliver’s was preposterous. It could not and would be borne. Instead, I travelled around Italy visiting friends and relatives, being a guest instead of the son of the host.

I returned early to Bologna and it was then that I met Umberto, a boy my age who looked like me and as different from Oliver as a man could be from another. We were good friends and lukewarm lovers. He was not overly interested in sex and very careful with his health, which suited me admirably.

Most of all I loved his mother, an aristocratic-looking widow named Cleopatra; she lived entirely in the past, wore clothes that had been fashionable in the 1950s and served us strong coffee in delicate porcelain cups.

“Elio, come and tell me about that Satie you were playing just now.”

They had a piano and she would always ask me to play, listening with her eyes closed, her bluish eyelids fluttering like moths.

I stayed with Umberto because of his mother and he was the one to end it. I could have survived in that limbo indefinitely.

“I can never tell what you’re thinking or feeling.”

“You could just ask me.”

“Would you tell me if I did?”

“Yes, of course.”

“You’re lying.”

And I was, in a way. It wasn’t dishonesty, as much as the inability to address the complexities of a relationship, to delve into it. I wanted to swim near the surface, steer clear of the murky depths of obsession. You never know when it might get hold of you. You could be conversing about the etymology of words and find yourself ensnared by a blue gaze or a pale forearm. You can never be too careful.

 

When I returned home for my birthday, which I celebrated with a minimum of fuss, my father introduced me to one of his new friends, a tall, sour-looking middle-aged Englishman named Jeremy. He was the editor of the Times Literary Supplement and he was offering me a paid internship.

“Surely I couldn’t work from here. I would need to be in London and take time off my studies.”

I was baffled that my father would consider another move abroad for me, after the San Francisco fiasco. I said as much, but it was mother who replied, to my great surprise.

“Bologna is not challenging enough for you.”

“I’m doing pretty well, I should think.”

I had crammed two years’ worth of exams into one and got thirty-cum -laude in all but one of them and the exception was due to the Professor’s intense dislike of Kant. I could have refused the mark and re-taken the exam, but it would have seemed petty.

“You are doing splendidly, _tesoro_ , but your father and I think you’re like a jokey who fell off his horse during the Grand National. You need to get back _in sella_ and try again.”

“You could study at King’s College while you are there. Your cousin is at the LSE; they are practically next door to one another,” added my father.

“You’ve already made up my mind for me,” I protested, but the idea wasn’t unappealing: I had been to London a couple of times and had found it exciting, palpitating with life.

 

And so I’d landed in London on a grey January afternoon and made it my new home. My digs were in a grim building tucked behind Waterloo. The flat itself was modern and bright and I had it all to myself. It was a short walk along the Waterloo Bridge to the Strand campus and the TLS offices - which I only visited once a week - were easily reachable by bus.

There isn’t much to say about my first six months in the city, aside from noting the reawakening of my sexual drive: at first I had slept with fellow students, but I soon realised that it wasn’t practical. It was then that I discovered the magnificent London gay scene and spent many popper-enhanced nights at Subway or Heaven or a dozen other clubs.

That erotic greediness didn’t last very long: it burnt itself out like an untended fire. One night I rubbed against this nameless boy I was kissing and felt the bristle of his chest hair and the memory of Oliver went through me like a demonic possession.

I was sick in the lavatory and as I stared at my livid eyes in the cracked mirror above the sink, I heard his voice: “don’t you chew your peas?” and broke down sobbing.

 

That fateful September evening I was going out with my friend Pierre to a party at the Blitz. I wasn’t looking forward to it, languorous as I still felt from lying in the sun and daydreaming among the cicadas, but I had promised him I would show up.

I had met Pierre at the LSE, the one time I had gone there to see my cousin. His name was in fact Sylvain, but he reminded me of the actor Pierre Cosso, so I kept calling him that and he didn’t object. He had the same style of beauty, both masculine and feminine, sort of bruised around the eyes. We had slept together once, just to get it out of the way, but we were not each other’s type. He liked big, muscled body-builders and I liked... better not to go there.

 

 “I’m not letting you stick your tongue inside my mouth so that you can make Thorsten jealous. He’s not even looking at us,” I shouted in Pierre’s ear. We had been dancing for twenty minutes or so and it was all going fine until he spotted his ex in the crowd.

One of his many exes, I should say, since he seemed to consider every guy he slept with more than a couple of times as his boyfriend.

“You are no fun at all,” he shouted back, and since I knew he would insist, I turned my back to him and dived into the crowd on the dance-floor.

_Relax, don’t do it when you want to go to it_

_Relax, don’t do it when you want to come._

 

When I danced back to the spot where I’d left Pierre, he was already gone. He did that all the time: begged me to go dance with him then pick someone up and disappear.

A Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s song segued into another: one of the most beautiful love songs in the history of pop, coming after a hymn to gay sex.

I guess it was written that it had to happen right at that moment, precisely when those lyrics were being sung.

A few couples groped and other kissed, some slow-danced, but the floor emptied considerably. I was closer to the bar, so I got there just before the stampede.

“Bacardi and Coke,” I said to the gum-chewing barman.

_I’ll protect you from the hooded claw_

_Keep the vampires from your door_

_When the chips are down I’ll be around_

_With my undying, death-defying love for you._

 

Nothing in the world could dent the power of those words for me, not even when I had been at my most cynical. I paid for the drink and when I grabbed my change from the counter I saw him.

The ultraviolet lights were making his teeth seem bluish-white. He was laughing at what the boy next to him had just said, a dark-haired slim young man with a perfectly straight nose which I could see in profile, like a king on a coin.

Oliver threw his head back and kept laughing, but then he stopped, bent down and kissed his friend on the lips.

I should have walked away as fast as I could, but I was transfixed, like someone staring at a car crash. It was painful, but I wouldn’t have wanted to be elsewhere but at that bar, just before Oliver realised I was there and I could still stare openly at him.

His hair was darker and his face had lost some of its padding; it was more chiselled, his bone structure more visible under his smooth skin. He was wearing a tight grey t-shirt and black jeans.

“Two G&Ts,” he called out, and finally his eyes met mine.

I shook my head and smiled.

He smiled back and said my name.

 

The boyfriend’s name was Tim and he worked for an insurance company based in the City. He was the same age as Oliver and was obviously madly in love with him, even though he seemed to know very little of the things he adored: ancient philosophy, foreign languages and poetry had not been part of Tim’s education nor were they of any interest to him.

Attraction between opposites, said Pierre later.

Like a dog scenting a bone, he had reappeared as soon as we’d sat down in the small bar where people went to make out. The lighting was low, but the music volume too, so we could talk.

“I have heard so much about you,” Tim said with not a shred of malice on his handsome face.

“Don’t tell me.”

“All of it was good. I’m glad to finally meet you.”

“Same here,” I lied, shamelessly.

Pierre engaged him in a conversation about the financing for the Docklands re-development, which gave me time to speak to Oliver.

It was one of the reasons I liked Pierre despite his many faults: he could talk about anything under the sun and he always knew what topic to choose according to his interlocutor.

“How long have you been together?” was the first thing I asked, but not what I really wanted to know. Are you in love with him? Did you stop loving me?

“It’s almost been a year. We live near Liverpool Street. I teach at the Birkbeck College. I’m in the building where Virginia Woolf used to live.”

“That would have been enough for me to accept the post.”

“It was enough.”

We smiled at each other and it was as if the months we had spent apart were dissolving before my eyes. Why had I left him, what was wrong with me?

“We are very happy,” he added.

He must have seen the expression in my eyes, a ray of hope, and he’d wanted to smother it at birth.

“What about you, are you and... Pierre, is it? Are you together?”

I couldn’t help but laugh.

“No, we’re just friends. It’s better that way.”

Not the best thing I could have said. You idiot, I raged internally; you unmitigated fool. Oliver did not comment, but his eyes were cold and he was assessing me as if I were a stranger.

We talked a bit more; Tim and Pierre joined in and we chit-chatted about the London gay scene, IRA terrorism, the Spandau Ballet versus Duran Duran rivalry – of which Oliver and I knew nothing about – and how we loved the brutal modernity of the Barbican Centre – which was of no interest to either Tim or Pierre.

They left soon after midnight, as it was mid-week and they had proper jobs to go to in the morning.

Just before walking away, Oliver asked if I would have coffee with him during his lunch hour. We agreed to me meet at the Brunswick Centre at 1 pm the following day.

 

“I saw this staircase in a movie, but I can’t remember which one it was.”

“The Passenger with Jack Nicholson.”

“I was sure you’d know. What are you reading there?”

“Ishiguro’s An Artist of The Floating World; it’s for work.”

“Any good?”

“Not half as good as your book on Heraclitus.”

“Very funny.”

We were having a quick lunch of sandwiches and coffee and fifteen minutes into our encounter we had not discussed anything personal.

I couldn’t wait any longer.

“Does my father know that you’re in London? Of course he does, silly me.”

He looked at me with his clear gaze, but there was nothing left of the intensity or censure I had both dreaded and wished for.

If he hated me, I still had a chance. But he did not seem to care enough to hate me.

“I’m sorry we kept you in the dark, but we both believed it would be for the best.”

My father sent me to London, I thought, which meant he wanted me to find Oliver. He must have imagined we’d eventually bump into each other in a club and he’d been right, as he usually was.

“I don’t know why I did... what I did,” I blurted out, feeling as if I had just been dipped in boiling water.

“You don’t have to...”

“But I want to try and explain. It felt like being on a speeding train and not knowing where it was going.”

“Or how to get off it,” he added. “Listen, I’m not angry with you, I never was. It was too much too soon. It was entirely my fault, from the start. I should have left you alone.”

“That’s not true; that’s not why,” I started to protest, but I couldn’t say for certain whether he was wrong. I knew that I’d wanted him, worshipped him and belonged to him, but maybe the timing had been wrong. Maybe we had lived in a dream and reality had been too much for my imperfect understanding of what my role was supposed to be.

He put his hand on mine and my heart jumped to my throat.

I love you, Oliver, I thought.

Why had it been so difficult to say two years ago?

Was I so immature to need a rival in order to accept the glaringly obvious?

“I love Tim,” he said, softly.

This is what it’s like to die, then: cold everywhere, a pain in my chest and the blood whistling in my ears.

“Tell me about him.”

Oliver started talking and it was like one these French Nouvelle Vague films where the actors move their lips, but only muted, indistinct sounds comes out of their mouths and music plays over it, in a saddening crescendo.

What I heard was that they’d met at the gym and dated for a month or so, before deciding to move in together. Tim liked to exercise every day, so at least they had that much in common.

“What was the operation?”

He stared at me, uncomprehending.

“You mentioned one day that the only time you’d stopped exercising was after your operation. When I asked you about it, you said ‘later’, but you never did tell me.”

“Tonsils,” he replied, smiling. “The things you remember.”

 “I remember everything.”

“You should let it go.”

“What if I didn’t want to? What if I asked you for another chance?”

There, I had said it.

Silence.

I had to force myself to look him in the eye, but when I did there was nothing for me to see. He had his poker face on, his ‘later’ face.

“It’s too late for that, Elio.”

“Because of Tim?”

“Yes, and because what went wrong then would probably go wrong again. You’re still only twenty.”

“Twenty-one in December.”

“I remember.”

“It was a great party.”

“It was.”

“You said you thought I was the one. Does this mean you were wrong?”

My heart was made of thorns and splinters of glass. Or perhaps of shrapnel and it was going to explode and raze the shopping centre to the ground.

But the word I feared more than death did not come.

Oliver finished his coffee and put his jacket on.

“Look, what happened between us was precious and unforgettable, but life goes on and maybe some things should exist only in the perfect bubble in which they were conceived.”

He stood up to go and the world was already drained of colour, an old black and white snapshot.

“Can I see you again? No more speeches, I promise.”

“I’ll think about it.”

Before he could change his mind, I scribbled my home address and phone number on the corner of a paper napkin.

“I live near Waterloo, behind the station.”

He gave me his hand to shake. It was warm and incredibly familiar.

“It was good to see you.”

“Same here,” I replied, even though my mouth was dry and working of its own accord.

I watched him leave convinced that I would never see him again.

Fortunately, I was wrong.          

 

It was the end of October when he phoned me.

The two months in between had been crammed with lectures, essay-writing, work and time spent with my friends in order to avoid thinking about Oliver.  It had all been in vain.

That evening I was expecting a call from Petri, a Danish friend who was supposed to get me tickets for a sold out exhibition at the Tate, where he was working part-time.

“Did you get them?”

“Hello?”

His voice took my breath away.

“Oliver?”

“Yes, is it a bad time? You were expecting another call.”

“Nothing important, don’t worry. How are you?”

“Great. Listen, there’s something I wanted to tell you personally: I’ve been asked by the TLS to write a series of articles on German philosophers.”

“That’s... really good. I was at the office yesterday and no one said a word; must be really top-secret.”

“I spoke to that young writer.”

“Oh, I see. He hates me.”

“Because you are even younger and know already more than he does. Writers have fragile egos. The reason I called is... I wanted to ask whether you’d work with me on the articles: proof-read them, tell me what you think and spot any obvious error.”

“Did you confirm it with them?”

“I wanted to ask you first, but yes, they’ve agreed in principle.”

“Why would you want my help?”

“You read German, you study philosophy and you work at the TLS: you are the perfect candidate. It will be a great addition to your resume.”

I wanted to ask him whether he didn’t mind that he would have to see me regularly, if he no longer cared. But I didn’t want to tempt fate.

“Yes, of course I’ll do it.”

“Good. I will ring you back in a few days, when I have something ready to show you.”

“If I am not in, leave a message.”

“I will. Sorry, I didn’t ask if you were alright.”

“Yes, all is well.”

“Goodnight.”

“Yes.”

After I put the receiver down, I stared at it for a long time, unable to believe that I had really heard his voice. When the phone rang again, I hoped it would be Oliver, but it was only Petri who had managed to get me not one but two spare tickets for the Dürer exhibition.

 

It was the start of the longest, most devious form of torture that I ever had to endure, much worse than the time when I had believed Oliver was sleeping with Chiara and all those other women.

Not only did I know that he was having sexual relations with another man, but I had to pretend I didn’t care, that I was alright with his indifference, his brotherly advice, his casual mentions of Tim. Once he even invited me to dinner at their flat, which was cosy, well furnished and filled with mementos of their life together.

We sat in the small study room and discussed nationalism and Nietzsche until Tim came in, dressed only in boxer shorts and t-shirt. He had a muscled body, lean and well proportioned. Compared to him, I was nothing but a gangly child.

“I’m going to bed. Don’t be too late,” he murmured into Oliver’s ear. He received a kiss on the cheek in return.

The worst part was the sheepish smile Oliver gave me, as if to plead for forgiveness, because what could he do? He was in love and didn’t want to hide it from me or from the rest of the world.

“He’s right,” I said, “It’s quite late already. I should go.”

“Are you going home?”

I was about to say yes, but I resented that he should pity me, that he should think my life revolved around him.

“I’m not ready for bed yet. I think I’ll go to Subway, catch some fun.”

Everybody knew that one only went to Subway if one wanted to have sex. His expression didn’t change; he nodded and smiled.

“Be safe,” he said, and that was it.

 

That became our routine for a month or so, until he completed his first article.

To celebrate, I invited him to the Tate exhibition. I had wanted to ask him before, but I could never summon the courage, afraid that he would refuse because of Tim.

It was a Friday evening at the beginning of December and the pavements were encrusted with frost. I wanted to hold his hand, curl my arm around his waist, lean against him. It killed me that I couldn’t even touch him.

“I hadn’t realised there would be so many works by Wilhelm Rudolph,” he said, as euphoric as a child at the circus.

“His drawings of post-war Dresden are unutterably sad.”

“He witnessed the near destruction of the city he loved and he couldn’t stop drawing it, even when it was all just rubble.”

“He stayed there because he couldn’t bear to leave, even though he must have suffered greatly,” I said.

Oliver stared at me, observing me closely for the first time since our chance meeting at the Blitz.

“It was a form of obsession,” he said, slowly, “It served the purpose of his art, but it wasn’t healthy.”

I felt my mouth contorting into a grimace, even though I’d only intended to smile.

“But we are here admiring his works. If he’d been thinking about his health, we would not be talking about him. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

“You have such a perverse way of looking at things,” he replied, but his smile was warmer, as if he’d finally decided to trust me again.

“Takes one to know one,” I said; this time he laughed, and I with him.

 

 We had dinner at the Tate restaurant.

“Thanks for inviting me. It’s a magnificent exhibition; grim, moving; I will be thinking about it for days. Is your friend here? I would like to thank him too.”

“He only works here Mondays and Wednesdays.”

“Boyfriend?”

“No, just a friend. He prefers girls, by the way.”

“And you?”

“Not for a while.”

“Have you been to Subway recently?”

“Yes, I usually go once a week, sometimes twice. I’m very careful, don’t worry.”

“We knew someone at the gym who was diagnosed with it. Thirteen months and he was gone.”

“I go to a clinic in Soho, have regular check-ups. I never take stupid risks.”

“Sometimes when one is drunk or high, one forgets to pay attention.”

“Why all these questions?”

“Your father was always very good to me.”

Suddenly, I felt a surge of anger that I couldn’t contain.

“I don’t need a guardian angel. I’m not a child anymore,” I said, and left him there, with his wine and salmon and his fatherly solicitude.

 

After that, we only met to talk about work and discuss his next assignments: cold and impersonal, he had reverted to the business-like, super-efficient Oliver.

The Christmas holidays were approaching, and I was going home to spend my birthday with my family.

It was the day before my departure that things came to a head.

We’d agreed to meet near Spitalfields Market: he was to give me a copy of his notes on Leibniz so that I could take them to Italy.

We had tea at a small cafeteria inside the market and it was only natural that they would play that kind of music. It was almost that time of the year, after all.

I had not been paying attention and when I did, it was already the end of the song.

_Though torn in two  
We can be one_

_I, I will begin again  
I, I will begin again_

_I will be with you again  
I will be with you again_

 

I had been such a good actor until then that I had almost convinced myself it didn’t matter anymore. My feelings had been suppressed until they had become only a tight ball of hurt pressing on my diaphragm. And just like that, they erupted and demanded to be let out.

I bit my lips and the inside of my cheek, but the tears would not subside.

“I have to go,” I mumbled, and ran away, stumbling into the jolly Christmas crowd. I was almost at Bishopsgate when I heard his voice calling me. I kept walking, blind and uncaring.

“Elio, stop!” he shouted one more time and his hand was on my shoulder and I could not resist him, because I was tired and lonely and cold.

I fell into his embrace and sobbed into his shoulder.

“Come here,” he murmured, and guided me to a quiet side alley.

“Please don’t cry, please,” he said, and his voice was sweet and comforting; I had started to shake too, since my nerves, which had been tried beyond endurance, finally gave way.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he was saying, but that wasn’t good, because it meant that it was really over, that he had made a mistake when he’d said he loved me, that now he only pitied me.

Even in my distress, I needed to know the truth, but when I looked up into his face, his mask had slipped, at last.

“Don’t cry,” he whispered, and he was gazing at me with the same intensity of that night, with the same love.

He didn’t add anything, he didn’t have to. He nodded and held me tight against him until I was calm again.

“You have to let me think about this, about us. We’ll talk again when you are back. Promise me you won’t be like this again.”

“I promise.”

“I’ll hail you a cab.”

“I can take the tube.”

“You’ll go by taxi.”

He caressed my face and wiped away my tears with his scarf. It smelled of him.

“Only if you let me keep this,” I said, smiling.

“You really are sick.”

“Sick and twisted.”

“That much we already knew,” he chuckled.

We walked to Liverpool street station’s taxi rank. He gave my address to the driver and paid for my fare.

“Enjoy your holiday. I’ll call you.”

“Don’t forget your notes.”

He handed me the plastic folder and our fingers touched. No more words were spoken.

 

My parents did not ask me about Oliver, but I suspected that my father had guessed that we’d met and that something had happened between us.

He never mentioned him to me, but once he asked me to play a movement from Brahms’ Symphony No 1 in C minor and when I asked him why, he just arched his eyebrows and walked away.

Of course I had understood the reference, because it was an established code language between us.

It was based on the concept of synecdoche: a part for the whole. The concerto was part of the soundtrack of a film about the relationship between an older woman and a much younger man. We’d watched it together on one of our film nights and I had read the book on which it was based. My father was telling me that he knew and that he was hoping Oliver wouldn’t behave like Ingrid Bergman had done at the end of the film.

 

On my birthday, I had decided that I wanted to stay at home rather than go out and party, so we had friends and relatives over for dinner. Vimini was there too and we spent part of the evening playing dernier, together with my two cousins. She was quicker than any of us and in no time the three of us had accumulated too many cards to stand a single chance of winning.

“Dernier,” she declared, with a smug smile on her pointy face, as she put down the last card.

The phone rang.

“I’ll go,”

I had been answering the phone all day, but Oliver had not called, so I was no longer expecting to hear his voice.

“ _Pronto_?”

“Elio is that you?”

“I thought you wouldn’t call... I waited all day.”

“Expectations are the root of all suffering.”

“That’s very wise of you.”

“I always thought you were the wiser one.”

We were flirting again.

“Is that what you wanted to do, lecture me on the nature of suffering?”

He laughed.

“Happy birthday,” he whispered.

“You know what would make it even happier.”

It wasn’t a question.

“I am working on it. There are things which have to be discussed, and someone is going to get hurt.”

“I know and I am sorry.”

“Let’s not do this on the phone. I just wanted you to know that I’m thinking about you.”

“My father knows about us.”

“I didn’t tell him.”

“He’s hoping we’ll get back together.”

“Is that what he said?”

“He asked me to play the Symphony No. 1 in C minor by Brahms.”

Any other person in the world would have wondered what the connection was, but I knew Oliver would understand.

He started laughing and I loved him even more than I thought was possible. This was something we shared that would always unite us, beyond lust and simple affection: we could finish each other’s thoughts and sentences, because he was me and I was him.

“I won’t do an Ingrid Bergman, I promise,” he said, still chuckling.

“I’ll be back on New Year’s eve. I told some friends I’d go to their party, but I could always cancel.”

“I’ll call you.”

“It felt good being in your arms again... more than good.”

“Yes.”

“It was like coming home. You’re my homecoming, Oliver.”

I felt him breathe deeply, trying to control himself.

“It was horrible to leave you like that, still red-eyed. I never wanted to hurt you.”

“I deserved it.”

“No you didn’t.”

I heard some distant noise.

“I have to go now. Enjoy your celebrations, only don’t drink too much. And chew your food properly.”

“I have a guardian angel.”

“Goose,” he replied, and then he was gone.

 

When I returned to the table, Vimini was playing _briscola_ with my aunt and beating her, too.

“She’s too good for me.”

“I have studied the games. This is all about mathematics while dernier is about speed and memory.”

My aunt sighed and went to fetch a glass of wine.

“It was Oliver on the phone,” Vimini said.

“Yes, he wanted to wish me happy birthday.”

She stared at me and wrinkled her nose. She was fourteen now, but still looked like a child because of her illness.

“You’ve hurt him, but he will never blame you. He thinks the world of you. He’d walk through the desert barefoot for you, like that actress in that Morocco film.”

“He’s got a boyfriend and he loves him.”

She made a noise of derision.

“I told you once already that you have never been very intelligent. He plays a part, like he did when he pretended not to care about you when he first came here. Why do you think he moved to London?”

“He was there already, so he didn’t do it because of me.”

She rolled her eyes and exhaled loudly.

“He wanted to be closer to you.”

“I saw him with his boyfriend. His name is Tim and he’s really nice.”

“My pet chameleon is nice too, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to get married to it.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at her unassailable logic.

 

 

Oliver had not called, so I was dressed up and ready to go a party I know I wasn’t going to enjoy.

The phone rang when I was already half out of the door.

“Hello?”

“I’m calling you from Heathrow. My father had a heart attack; he passed away last night.”

I didn’t know what to say, but I knew what I wanted to do.

“Is Tim with you?”

“No,” he said, but clearly didn’t want to explain any further.

“May I come with you?”

“What? No, it would be impossible for me to.... my family would immediately assume we are together and you know what they think of that.”

“I know, I know. I would not come to your house; I’d check into a hotel and you’d come and see me when you can. Or we could just talk on the phone. I want to be there for you.”

“I wish I could say yes, but the situation is quite complicated...”

He was never going to let me go with him, so I did the next best thing. I had not planned to say it over the phone, but I knew it was the right moment.

“I love you, Oliver. More than anyone and anything in the world; I’ll wait for you, but please don’t let it be too long. Tell me if this makes you happy.”

“Yes, very happy.”

I could hear that he was all choked up.

“I’m so sorry about your father. I will think of you every moment until you come back to me. Phone me any time, even in the middle of the night.”

“You won’t hear; you sleep like a baby.”

“Only when you are in bed with me.”

“Sounds almost like blackmail.”

He was smiling; I could tell from his voice.

“You know me: I’m a _dissoluto assoluto_.”

“Se l’amore.”

“Se l’amore yourself.”

I had managed to alleviate his pain for a little while; if we’d been a couple, I thought, I would have been there with him, whether he agreed or not. I understood at last what Vimini had meant: she had seen me take all that Oliver had offered, but give little in return. My body I had yielded easily, but aside from pleasure and clever conversation what else had I given him?

 

Three days passed and Oliver didn’t ring once.

His silence was driving me crazy, but at least I had gotten drunk and stoned, so I could forget my woes, at least in part.

On the evening of the third day, I had to get out of the flat or go completely insane. I was going to the opening of a new club in Soho and since they had a gothic theme I was dressed head-to-toe in black and wearing eyeliner and wet-look gel. I felt like an idiot, but I at least I was going on the bus rather than by tube.

I was putting on my coat when the doorbell rang.

Pierre, I thought. I had asked him to meet me there, but he had a tendency to forget what he didn’t consider important.

“Didn’t we say...  oh!”

Oliver was standing right in front of me, hair dishevelled, hollow cheeked, gorgeous.

He took one look at my face then one at my clothes: the unbuttoned shirt, the skin-tight jeans.

“Get back inside,” he said, his voice low and hoarse.

He stalked after me and closed the door with his foot.

I didn’t have time to ask him anything: he took my face in both his hands and kissed me.

Lips, tongue, the rasping scratch of his stubble: I wanted to climb inside of him and stay there forever. He was eating me alive and I was devouring him in return.

I had not even realised that he’d pushed me onto the sofa and that his hands were all over me, until I felt his fingers caress my bare chest, rub my nipples.

I arched my back and he buried his face in my neck, trying to catch his breath.

“Were you going to Subway?” he asked.

“No, to a new place in Soho.”

“The way you look... are you telling me the truth? I have been in hell thinking of you there, being groped by strangers.”

He licked the hollow of my throat and sucked on it. I had never seen him like that.

I was aching to reassure him, but I also needed to know how things stood between us.

“I haven’t been in months, certainly not since we met at the Blitz. I didn’t want you to feel sorry for me. That night you were about to go to bed with your... and I was going home on my own.”

Oliver nuzzled the side of my neck and suckled on my earlobe.

“You have no idea how much I’ve missed you,” he whispered. “I wanted you to be free to experiment and to just be your friend, but it was sheer torture.”

I looked into his eyes and they were dark and serious with desire.

Pressing my cheek against his, I tried to comfort him.

“What happened with your family?”

He sat back and gathered me into his arms.

“The funeral was awful, and I was numb for most of the ceremony. My mother had hardly spoken two words to me, but then at the reception she had a drink or three and you know what she did? She took me aside and told me she’d been in a coma for the last twenty years; that she’d led a parallel life in her head, one without my father and away from the drudgery of provincial life. You should count your blessings, she said. You’ve made the right decision and when you’re my age, you’ll be able to say that you lived a full life.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I kissed along his collarbone.

“And then it hit me that I was doing the opposite of what she’d said. I was trying to play it safe, afraid to take the risk of trusting my feelings for you.”

“What about Tim? You said you were in love with him.”

“I said I loved him... the inadequacies of the English language.”

Oliver combed his fingers through his hair and squeezed his eyes shut.

He was displeased with his own behaviour; he clearly felt that he’d let everyone down.

“Our relationship has been rocky for a while. He knew about you. There were things I could never... Anyway, I told him the truth and he said he doesn’t want to see me again. I can’t say I blame him.”

“He’s very handsome.”

“Yes.”

“And I am just a kid.”

“Yes.”

We held each other gaze while electricity sparked between us. Like that time in Rome, when we had fooled around but not finished.

“I used to wonder whether you heart would jolt when I entered a room. When I dreamed about you and you hardly looked at me.”

He was breathing hard, biting the inside of his lips.

“I always knew where you were, even when I pretended to ignore you,” he murmured.

Suddenly, he went to work on my clothes with the same speed as on our first night. We were both naked in no time.

Before I could realise what was happening, Oliver had gone down on his knees and swallowed my cock into his mouth, all of it.

“I am okay,” I mumbled, answering the unspoken health question, but I’m not sure he heard me. He sucked me deep and hard and when I came, he slurped me down with a growl of satisfaction. I demanded he came all over me and slid a finger inside him; he begged me to look at him; when he shot his load, he closed his eyes and called me by his name.

 

After a shower and a glass of wine, I gave him a pair of pyjama pants and a t-shirt and took him to my bedroom. He lay on the bed, his back against the headboard as if he’d always belonged there: unutterable, never-ending bliss.

“Wait, I’m going to show you something.”

I opened a drawer and removed a garment from a cellophane bag.

“Remember this?”

I put billowy on and performed a mock-curtsy.

“You kept it all this time.”

His eyes filled with tears. I bent down and kissed the bridge of his nose.

“Now I can wear it, because you are here with me and I can smell you instead of your shirt.”

“Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?”

I shrugged and billowy slid down my shoulder: it was too big for me, but who cared? Certainly not Oliver, who was licking my naked skin.

“It’s just like you not to know. You’re ethereal, like a Burne-Jones angel.”

That was such an extravagant compliment that I didn’t know what to reply. I knew that I was attractive to some people, but I’d always thought Oliver liked me for reasons other than my appearance. I’d somehow imagined that he loved me despite my evident shortcomings: my non-existent muscles, my long, skinny legs, my under-developed chest.

“I liked you from day one and wanted you from the moment I saw you in your swimming trunks,” he said.

His foot was on mine, possessive and soft-skinned.

“I told you what I did to your red bathing suit.”

“What you don’t know is that I did something to yours too.”

“When?”

He’d never told me, not even the second time he’d visited.

“You remember how you used to sleep on the sofa some afternoons? I’d usually come in to check on you then I’d go out again, but once I couldn’t resist and I went into your room. You’d let your suit on the bed, so I held it against my face, smelled it, tried to taste your sweat.”

“And I was on sofa, in an agony of lust and despair.”

Oliver took my hand and held it against his lips.

“You confused me, because I felt so much for you, so soon. And I kept telling myself it was wrong and when you left me in San Francisco, I thought I deserved it for having taken something too precious, which did not belong to me.”

I let my head fall on his shoulder and kissed his neck.

“I will never leave you again, unless you ask me to.”

“I could never do that.”

“Will you move in with me?”

He didn’t hesitate.

“Yes.”

“How soon?”

“As soon as we get out of bed.”

I placed my hand on his crotch and felt it stiffen.

“It might take some time.”

He pulled me on top of him and squeezed my buttocks.

“I have all the time in the world.”

  

It was early morning when I opened my eyes, but Oliver was already awake and he was staring at me, at my naked leg, to be precise.

“I was waiting for you to wake up so I could touch it.”

“You shouldn’t have,” I said, and placed his hand on my thigh. He laughed and pinched the tender skin behind my knee.

“I want to cook you breakfast. Do you have anything edible in your fridge?”

“The usual; we could have bacon, eggs and toast. I brought a _caffettiera_ from Italy, so we can have decent espressos.”

His hand travelled up and down my leg, lazily.

“This is what we missed on the other time,” he said.

“What, lying in bed talking about food?”

“Domesticity, paying the bills, cooking food, meeting each other’s friends; when I was in Italy, I was your guest and when you came to the States, you were mine. We lived in a bubble. This time it will be real life, not a holiday.”

“Yes and you’ll start bossing me around.”

He tousled my hair, like my mother used to do. 

“It’s not really my style. As long as I have a desk and a chair, I’m going to be fine. But I would like to buy you a piano.”

“There isn’t enough room!”

The idea delighted me, but I didn’t want to give in too easily.

“If you remove that old armchair by the window, it should fit quite nicely.”

“Did you miss my plunking?”

“I missed everything about you.”

“I would love to have a piano.”

We brushed lips, kissing each other’s smiles.

“Why did you ask me to help you with the TLS articles?”

“So that I could be close to you, work with you, listen to you, discuss the things I love with you. I didn’t only miss the intimacy.”

It reminded me of something and I decided to tell him.

“The morning after our first time...”

“When you wanted me gone...”

“Yes, well, I thought that I didn’t want your body because I stupidly believed that I was done with it. But then we started talking about Haydn and later it occurred to me that desire could sneak in from that gate as easily as from any sexual act.”

“I don’t think I will ever be done with your body. There’s only one more issue we should discuss.”

He rolled on top of me, gazing into my eyes.

“I used to smell Marzia on you and I never said anything because I had no right. I hated it all the same.”

The absurdity of what he was implying left me gaping like a fish.

“I’ve done all the experimenting I wished to do. I want to come home now.”

“Odysseus returning from his travels.”

“ _To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield_.”

“You really do know everything,” he said, and for the first time I saw his admiration for what it really was: not a device I was supposed to respond to with sarcasm or fake modesty, but a token of his love for me. At a time when he couldn’t have kissed me or held me in his arms, he had valued my conversation like no other adult had. At the dinner table, when I was pontificating about music, he had given me his undivided attention in lieu of caresses.

“And now I also know a little bit more about the things that really matter.”

“What things that really matter?” he asked, breathing against my lips.

“You know what things,” I replied, and slid my tongue into his mouth.

He let me take charge of the kiss, even though he was on top of me, let me pull his hair a little, so that I could show him what I wanted and how intensely.

“I’ve a confession to make,” he whispered, minutes later. “You are the only one who’s ever been inside of me.”

This revelation pleased and shocked me in equal measure: Oliver was an obviously dominant creature, but he loved being taken, or did he really? Maybe he’d only done it for me, but had not truly enjoyed it.

“I wanted to keep something for you only. I have always used protection, but not with you. Unless you want us to, that is.”

He was hard and wet against me and there was a softness in his face and eyes which was more eloquent than a thousand words.

“Let me make love to you.”

I had kept something for him too and I gave it to him then: I spread his buttocks apart and licked him until we were both light-headed with lust. When I entered him, he moaned and arched and writhed, pulling me even deeper inside him. We never closed our eyes and came nearly at the same time, only a breath apart.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to all of you who read my story. I really hope you enjoyed it.


	3. Epilogue – Italy summer 1987

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a short epilogue - notes in the previous chapter.
> 
> happy ending!!!!!

I was playing the piano concerto in C major by Salieri in the manner of a young Mozart.

We had watched Amadeus the previous night and I was possessed by the same impish zest for life.

“That’s a very naughty trick you’re playing on poor Salieri,” Oliver said, bending down to kiss the back of my neck. I leaned back against him and felt his skin still hot from his _aprication_ under the sizzling July sun.

“I was talking to your father and he asked me point-blank if I’m planning to write a book on Kierkegaard. What’s going on?”

“You teach philosophy.”

“I know you and your father’s secret codes. And I also heard you speak on the phone and being all secretive with Petri.”

“I’m going to learn Danish.”

I had let Salieri go and replaced him with Debussy.

“Are you moving to Denmark?” he asked and no one but me would have heard the tension in his voice. He was striving to sound deliberately casual, which he only did when he was afraid of something.

“I was hoping we might go together, at some point in the future.”

I knew he would get there in a moment, so I kept playing, trying not to smile.

“You want to be married to me?”

“Technically, it’s not a real marriage, but,”

Oliver didn’t let me finish; he spun me round, picked me up and kissed me hard on the lips.

“You two should get a place to yourself to do these _things_ , a room for instance.”

Vimini was healthier than before, but she was still tiny for her age.

“You will cause me diabetes mellitus and I certainly don’t need another life-threatening condition. What is going on in Denmark?”

“Were you eavesdropping?” I asked and Oliver chuckled.

“No, but your father was discussing Out of Africa with your mother. He kept calling the author Isak Dinesen, but I know her real name was Karen Blixen and that she was Danish.”

She raised her eyebrows imitating my father and we burst out laughing.

“I have always wanted to see the statue of the Little Mermaid.”

“You can come and stay with us once we are there.”

Vimini gave me an inquisitive look and curved her lips in one of her cat-like smiles.

“You are not that stupid after all,” she declared and left the room, head held high like a queen.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading and please leave a kudos/comment if you enjoy the story


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